


I kept running for a soft place to fall

by gotta_write_them_all (sailorsally)



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Guilt and Shame make guest appearance as always, Hurt/Comfort, James has a panic attack towards the end you have been warned, London Era (Black Sails), M/M, Multi, Panic Attacks, Reunions, because James is James and he has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sailorsally/pseuds/gotta_write_them_all
Summary: This is a story of James and Thomas returning to each other over and over again.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw, Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Miranda Barlow/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	I kept running for a soft place to fall

Thomas is pressed against James’ back, his chin resting against the other man’s shoulder. James’ hair smells of sea and sweat. Thomas’ left arm, draped against his torso, holds him close. Their fingers rest entwined against James’ belly, just above the spot James has spilled prompted by Thomas’ skillful fingers and determined touch just mere moments earlier.

Outside, London is as gloomy as ever but for the first time in the last three months Thomas finds that he doesn’t share the sentiment. The cold tickles his bare back while the warmth from James’ body flows through him like an untamed river. He enjoys the contrast. It keeps him on his toes, enhances his senses, colours his feelings, vividly, like a kaleidoscope   
  


James is _here_ . With _him._ He should have known it’d be like this, Miranda had reassured him on countless occasions, had she not? And frankly James had been nothing but truthful with him for as long as they had known each other. But Thomas worried that that time hadn't been all too long. On the contrary, it had been desperately short. What is a week to a lifetime even if to some it _is_ life itself?

As much as Thomas had been wanting to listen to Miranda and be rational about it all, he had found it hard - three months is an awfully long time to be away from someone when all you had together was a handful of nights. Infatuation wears off fast, especially when prompted by distance and intimate sleeping arrangements with other men.

It's not that he ever doubted James’ return to London and to his duty as a liaison. What had feared over these past months is that, once returned and having had plenty of time to think at the sea, James would have decided not to pursue their relationship and would revert to being his polite and proper self he had been at first. He had feared James would have had a change of heart, when his own heart had been changed forever, on that evening James defended his honour and kissed him back.

Of course he had been worried for nothing. Thinking back now, he does feel shame for doubting James and his word.

James had come back, just as promised and had pushed him against the oak door of his study to kiss him, just as he had imagined laying in bed on sleepless nights that have been so many during those last months.   
  


“You came back to _me_ ,” Thomas whispers in James' ear.   
  
James stills under him for a moment. Then starts to untangle himself from Thomas but never lets go of his hand as if he could hear Thomas’s thoughts from a moment ago, as if Thomas had spoken the fears of his past to him out loud, instead of thinking them. So he keeps a firm hold on Thomas’ hand as he rolls over to face him.   
  
Thomas beams at him so brightly that for a moment James thinks the rain outside is no more and he is back under the Caribbean sun. New kind of warmth pools into his body, different from what he experienced moments ago when Thomas pleasured him. This one sits higher in his belly, just under his ribcage - a more permanent kind that warms but doesn’t burn.

  
He brings their entwined fingers to his lips and plants a kiss on Thomas’ knuckles.   
Thomas’ smile gets bigger and James can hear a chant rise from deep within his being ‘ _I love you I love you I love you’_   
  
“I did. I came back to _you_. I will always come back to you,” he tells Thomas, green eyes fixed on blue and he hopes Thomas can hear the chant too.

“I know you will,” Thomas tells him and he finds that he believes it - no, he knows it - and pulls James into a kiss.

***

  
  
“What you and Thomas shared was entirely something else. It’s time you allowed yourself to accept that”, Miranda tells him. 

She means it well, he knows, but she is wrong. Oh _so wrong_ .

  
It’s not her fault. It’s just that she still thinks of James as McGraw when James has spent the last ten years escaping that name, building walls around it, not allowing anyone to look inside, not even himself. McGraw was ashamed and so is Flint.   
  
‘ _How can you say that when he died alone in an asylum while I was here? Away from him?’_ he thinks. 

He won’t allow it. He won’t remember the musky smell of Thomas' nape right after they had made love and like or how it felt to run his fingers through Thomas’ hair when the man was still asleep. He won’t because he doesn’t deserve it.

  
He made a vow and never kept it. Instead he let Thomas rot and die alone.   
  
But then Miranda places the book in front of him and as he looks at it he can feel the pain grow in his belly, sweet sweet pain and he thinks this is actually something he deserves so he reaches out, touches the cool cover, feels the familiar lettering under his fingertips. When he opens the book his eyes land on the inscription and he feels it - his entire body crumbles from pain. He hurts and hurts and he sobs from happiness.   
  


***

  
James is sat on a bed in an unfamiliar room. The wind makes the shadows from the three outside the window dance at his feet. He’s looking at his hands, now freed from shackles, resting in his lap. The door closes with a light noise and when he looks up he sees a middle aged blonde leaning against it. Thomas is looking at him, wonder and happiness painted all across his features.

  
James averts his eyes. Thomas comes to stand in front of him. When James won’t look at him he kneels down before him, lays his hands over James’ in his lap. 

James feels like running.   
  
“You came back to me,” Thomas whispers and James runs.

  
  


He runs and watches the blood from Miranda’s head seep through the wooden floor in Peter Ashe’s dining room. Again and again. Watches her lifeless body caged in an ugly coffin as the town around it burns to the ground. He runs and feels his hand grip a pistol as he shoots and kills a sailor, a man his own crew. Then a stranger. Another pistole, now it’s a woman. Now it’s a sword, his clothes are soaked, red. He runs and hears the sound his friend’s neck makes as it finally breaks under the pressure of his grip, and feels how the body stills against his. He runs and feels something warm drip all over his face and he recognizes the metallic taste of it on his tongue. He runs and he tastes blood for the first time as a man explodes just mere meters away from him. He runs and the salt burns his lungs until he is back in the drawing room of the Hamilton’s residence and he hears his own voice ask “Where is Tomas?” and suddenly there is nowhere to run, he is out of breath, panting and struggling.  
  
When he comes back to his senses, he is sitting on the floor, the hard frame of the bed pressing against his back. Thomas is still there holding his face between his palms.   
  


“James, it’s okay. Breathe.”

James does. He breathes and breathes like he wants to choke on the air itself. 

“It’s okay. I’m here,” Thomas reassures him and holds him as James’ body shakes from violent sobs.

He only notices he’s been crying once the tremors subside and Thomas wipes his tears away with his sleeve.  
  
“Let’s get you into bed,” Thomas suggests once James’ sobs quieten down.   
  
He helps James get out of his clothes and boots, placing them at the foot of the bed.

James knows Thomas will leave. He is sure of it. He waits and waits.

Instead Thomas strips down to his underclothes and lays down next to him, plastering himself to James’ back.  
  
“Sleep. I will be here when you wake up tomorrow,” he tells James as he squeezes his arm in reassurance.   
  


James, exhausted, standing on precipice of sleep and wakefulness, of death and life, thinks that, maybe, all those years ago Thomas really heard the chants of his heart and he thinks   
_“I don’t deserve you, I never did”_ and thinks _“I am sorry”_ and _“you are alive, you are alive and you are here, I love you, I love you I love you”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading x
> 
> If you wanna talk about these two idiots, I'm sailorsally over at tumblr x


End file.
